#fansubbing

After watching the hazel video on indie tokusatsu fighting girls, I did what I’m sure everyone else also felt compelled to do: immediately started fansubbing the videos she referenced. In the process of doing so, I continually asked myself - who were these people making these low-budget, impassioned, and extremely otaku films? My usual areas of Japanese media knowledge - self-published comics/doujinshi and anime production - weren’t a lot of help in this Japanese indie film world, although given the otaku overlap in consumers I did make some useful connections between creators, conventions, and genres.

The deeper I dove into research on these indie production companies and watched their behind-the-scenes footage, the more I got a vision of what the network surrounding the very specific snapshot of time in this particular industry. For example, early Eiyu Club was a group of passionate people self-funding to make movies until they began to earn that money back to go onto bigger productions. The founder of Center Island, Hironobu Nakajima, self-funded many of the projects, even with the knowledge that they’d not make a profit. This sort of do-it-yourself, passion-fueled, community-minded mentality taps into my own roots in self-published comics, fanfic writing, and various other non-professional artistic pursuits.

After doing all of these fansubs and research, I feel something of a kinship with Eiyu Club, Center Island, and the other very indie production companies. Seeing a masked heroine do kick flips above an ugly demon man wearing tights while homemade midi music blasts over their fight scene has started to feel… well, like seeing a friend. Watching the behind-the-scenes footage where the actors are sprinting around moving props and carrying pieces of a tokusatsu costume reminds me that every film, no matter how cheesy or poorly edited they can get, is a miracle. It reminds me of beta reading a friend’s fanfic for a fandom I don’t even know, or sitting in a recording studio while my friend belts out songs that I’ll later clumsily mix with karaoke backing instrumentals. Throw some passionate amateurs together and hey, magic happens.

So that’s why I focus on this genre, and have a soft spot for behind-the-scenes footage in particular. For a few minutes, I get to watch someone be absolutely exhausted and enormously excited about something they’re making, even if it won’t make a huge profit, or even be seen by a ton of people. I watch it and think, damn, you guys made a movie, and you’re still so excited to make another after.

It struck a chord with me as I had sort of stumbled into media preservation in starting my fansubbing hobby. There were a few sequels/prequels to 90s and 00s Japanese indie heroine tokusatsu films I fansubbed over on @gossamerufansubs that I could not find online so I had to learn how to rip LaserDisc and DVDs to get them, once I ordered them from ZenMarket. I genuinely wonder, once I fansub them and put them online, if I would be the only person to do that.

Goda nyheter, anon!

(Updated on 2025-11-21 -- Posted on 2025-10-30)

Anime streaming service Crunchyroll reduced its subtitle presentation quality to an all-time low with the start of the Fall 2025 anime season. While some silent backpedaling has happened since, the situation is still ongoing and the future looks bad – which is why you should act before things get permanently worse.

What you can do about it

If you are currently subscribed to Crunchyroll, cancel your subscription. When asked for a reason, mention the bad subtitle quality and lack of typesetting. You could even link to this article. Beyond that, and this applies to people who aren’t subscribed to Crunchyroll as well: spread the word! Share this article around, talk to people about how Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles, make it so that Crunchyroll executives can’t ignore the issue. And the most important thing: Keep it up until Crunchyroll actually makes a clear public commitment to keep typesetting anime.

We're working on assembling a fansub team for the PriParaxAikatsu movie + other Pretty Series projects. (Including doing an overhaul of ALL PriPara subs through Idol Land + movies and potentially a King of Prism Tours fansub.)

Please fill out this form to apply. https://tally.so/r/68eGxJ

Positions filled:

Project leader, TL, ED, TS - Cynthia

Looking for:

Additional/backup JP TL (in case additional help is needed)

QC

Japanese TLC

TS (signs)

Song TL

Song editor

Raw provider

Encoder

Additional roles:

Not really an "official" role, but someone with knowledge of "Akari-gen" Aikatsu since the movie primarily centers around PriPara and the characters from Akari-gen Aikatsu.